ANOTHER DELAY The holding limit for the SIFs stays at 1%

• Ovidiu Marian: "The deputies were too lazy"

• Unhappy investors suspect market manipulation

Yesterday, deputies failed once again to vote on the raising of the holding limit in the SIFs from 1% to 5%, as some of them had anticipated starting with Monday.

The new was followed by drastic price drops for the five SIFs, and on the internet, some investors expressed their discontent, raising suspicions of market manipulation through the talks around the draft bill.

One reader commented on the website of BURSA: "Deputies, why do you mock this people? Did you really not have the time to vote on this draft bill or was it supposed to be postponed to see the prices drop so you can buy more stock in those companies at lower prices?! Do we still need to explain to everybody is waiting for the raising of the holding limit?! Just do a simple check: each time the raising of the holding limit was put up for debate, the stocks of the SIFs shot up. Do we need further proof?"

After waiting for almost two years to be brought up for debate, the draft was approved on November 7th, and received the approval of the Budget and Finance Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, which caused the stocks of the SIFs to rise. Expectations concerning the vote have caused the prices to shoot up last week as well, just like they did after the announcement of senator Ovidiu Marian, the initiator of the law, who was saying that the draft would certainly be discussed in the plenum yesterday. However, on Monday, some deputies said that most likely, the talks would be postponed, meaning that the actions of the SIF ended the day down, even though they had been rising in the beginning of the session.

Mr. Marian said, yesterday, that the debates have been postponed until next week. "The items included on the agenda were not discussed. The deputies were too lazy", he said.

Some of the MPs said that they did not have the time to vote on the raising of the holding limit in the SIFs, even though the agenda of the Chamber of Deputies stated that the final vote on the draft bill was scheduled to take place at 11:00 "until its completion ". Monday's and Tuesday's agendas included almost 100 initiatives.

Ioan Cuzman, the president of SIF1 ,,Banat-Crişana" said that "the postponing of the debates until next week does not constitute a reason to believe that the market has been manipulated".

Mihai Chişu, broker at "IFB Finwest", said that the stock market was strongly influenced, yesterday, by the state of the SIFs. "The SIFs are greatly and dramatically influenced by the proposal to change the holding limit", he said.

Early on Tuesday, the SIFs rose by up to 4%, but the BET-FI index, which tracks their stocks, ended the day down 4.03% compared to Monday.

"Investors wish for this limit to be adopted", the IFB Finwest broker said.

Mihai Chişu considers that the SIFs will recoup part of the losses posted if the deputies vote in favor of raising the threshold.